Prelude of Shadows
by Flurrin
Summary: Lore of the past and future clash when a Shiekah sage tries to enter the Sacred Realm using a forbidden weapon and unleashes an ancient power, speeding the evolution of a new race. In this story of long forgotten scrolls and hidden truths, the end is merely a familiar beginning. Set during the missing time of the Child Era.
1. Innocent As It Seems

There are some works in Hyrule's ancient library that are said to have come from other worlds.

Besides the Book of Mudora and countless scripts written in a tongue few can still decipher, there is one set of documents in particular that one can differentiate at a glance. The paper upon which silver writing is scrawled is as black as charcoal, a sharp contrast to the gentle yellowed scrolls surrounding. Some claim they were written by an unrestrained malice, one so evil that it was too great for the land of Hyrule. A few scholars have labeled the tale it contains 'propaganda' for brainwashing an unwary generation, but those who take the time to read it have come to find that it seems a sincere and rueful recounting of a tale that never made its way into the official history books.

Perhaps, then, it's just fiction. There is, as of yet, no evidence to prove the reality behind this tale. But for those who are curious, it begins as such:

 _"_ _The Sheikah are a proud race, but we never forget the past. And when this story began, our people had already suffered at the hands of hatred and greed. We were healing, but the old among us still knew that Hyrule was responsible for our pain… Still, all was forgiven so that our people could live at peace, as we had before. Though Hylians and Sheikah both tottered on the brink of doubt, things were better._

 _"_ _Sometimes it seems like every event spun out of control, and I know, if any of us had the chance to go back, we might have done things differently. But we can never change the flow of time._

 _"_ _Please, listen well. There are things I want to tell only to you."_

* * *

It was amusing to pass straight from the crisp spring air of Castle Town into the stuffy, dust-drowned interior of the Official Hyrulian Library. Nokune poked her way through the double doors, almost coughing. Sunlight through the customized window above the door painted a slightly crooked symbol of the Triforce onto the smooth stone floor, and within the massive, arching room, two voices ricocheted off the walls—a contrast to the otherwise heavy silence, despite the number of people the building contained.

"Absolutely not!"

"Aska, I swear I'll be gentle. I only need it for a minute. Then I'll write down what I want and be out of your hair."

Ironically, the louder of the two voices belonged to the operator of the establishment. Aska pushed her spectacles higher on the bridge of her nose with a frown deep enough for two faces. She hugged a thick, bright green volume tight to her chest. She was an icy woman, proper and strict, incapable of loving anything half as much as her books. The woman's pale blond hair was tied in a stiff braid with a red ribbon, the only splash of opposing color to her otherwise sunshine-yellow ensemble. She sniffed and held up the book for a minute, displaying it sarcastically. "This is the _Book of Mudora_. It is _the_ most powerful book of spells in all of Hyrule. I will _not_ just pass it out to any amateur magician who asks to borrow it."

The man she was arguing with was Nokune's uncle, Okuin. He was tall and thin for a Shiekah, with very dark, almost black skin. His pallid hair was secured in a low pony tail that fell nearly to his waist. "Come on," he pleaded.

Nokune slipped up next to her uncle, smirking. This wasn't the first time such an argument had taken place. Aska and Okuin did not get along.

He didn't seem to notice the newcomer at first, which Nokune took as a compliment to her stealth skills. "You can trust me," the man continued. "I'm a sage, too, you know."

And he was. But while Aska was the knowledgeable Sage of Light, Okuin was her polar opposite: a young and still-in-training Sage of Shadow. The librarian gave him a look that told him his position had little to do with their argument.

Okuin folded his hands. "…Pleeeeease?"

With a sigh, Aska finally handed him the massive tome. He could hardly disguise his eagerness, but he took the book with respect, opening it immediately. Nokune leaned around his shoulder, and he glanced over and gave her a wide smile.

"Oh, hey, it's my favorite niece! Where have you been all day?" he asked brightly. Aska drew herself up as though she were about to burst, and Okuin cut himself off as he noticed her impatience. "Hold that thought."

He laid a strip of parchment over one page and copied something down lightly with a thin charcoal stick. Then he removed his notes and handed the _Book of Mudora_ back to the woman. "Thank you," he said politely.

Aska huffed, possibly disappointed that he hadn't done anything to warrant a scolding. Hugging the book under one arm, she turned on her heel and flounced away, the lacy edge of her dress swishing against the stone floor.

Poking her uncle, Nokune now answered his earlier question. "I've been out around the castle. It's my day off, but the weather's nice. What was all that about? Must be pretty important if it's worth dealing with _Aska_."

Okuin began wandering in the direction of his personal study, which opened into the library, for convenience's sake. He kept his eyes glued mainly to the scrap of paper, trying to memorize the text on it, which was clearly written in a different language. "It's the oddest thing. This scroll arrived for me today from the Gerudo Desert. Apparently someone from there thought it might interest me, but I don't think they would have sent it if they'd known what it was. It's some kind of spell, I think it's meant for summoning some…kind of…tool."

"Sounds very general," Nokune muttered.

"Eh-heh, it's hard to explain. I think I need to do a little more research on the Sacred Realm to understand it fully…but from what I can tell, it's meant to be a weapon that can 'pierce the heavens'."

"That's a little creepier, actually."

Okuin's mind was working along different lines. His long hair bounced as his head shot up. "Ooh, I know. Let's just try it out a see!"

"Huh? Uwahh—!" Nokune struggled to keep up as Okuin looped his arm around hers and charged off. They took the steps down to his cellar-based study—really more of a messy laboratory—two at a time until Okuin let go of her and bent for a moment to catch his breath. She thought to put her hand on his shoulder, but before she could ask how he was doing, he'd pulled ahead. He grabbed miscellaneous objects and set up a stool for her to observe as piles of Nayru-knew-what gradually accumulated on his desk. In the end, he lit several candles to illuminate what looked like patterns traced into the dust and small rocks dumped out on the table top. Then he slid open a scroll, tacking on the new notes, and began to read out the spell.

Nokune slipped onto the seat without taking her eyes away from the scene. She was highly interested by now. Most Hylians would question why a Shiekah girl of only sixteen years would rather sit on a bench in a musty lab and listen to someone muttering in gibberish than hang out with friends her own age in the sunlight, but Nokune had always been like that. Okuin was more like a big brother than an uncle. She was fiercely loyal to him, despite the fact that she could pin him in a fight any day. Their similar circumstances united them: Okuin had lost his closest relatives in the same house fire that had orphaned Nokune. They took care of each other. He cheered her on during her harsh military regimen, and she enjoyed watching him train in magic.

The spell was long. Okuin nearly broke his concentration when the edge of the old paper sliced a nick into his finger. He hissed the remainder of the words out, waving the wounded finger through the air indignantly, and the candles dimmed for a moment when he stopped. The stones on the table exploded, like balloons popping, and what remained of them hung in the air for a second before shooting past Okuin. He flinched, but none of them touched him as they passed.

The sage put the scroll down. "Hm. Nothing happened." He'd scarcely finished speaking before his hair rippled spasmodically and proceeded to braid itself into an even plait.

Nokune nearly fell off the stool. "Your hair!" She pointed, grinning.

He glanced at her, then spun around until the braid flopped over his shadow. There, fastening the bottom, sat an odd, black metal clip, box-like and decorated in meaningless runes. Okuin's eyebrows furrowed in confusion. "That's all it does? …Well. That's just stupid."

His bony shoulders slumped over the odd creation as he bit his lip in disappointment. Nokune though back to his argument with Aska. If he'd gotten her to agree, he must have been wearing her down for hours. And for what?

A second thought occurred to her, and she slid off her perch to comfort her disillusioned uncle. "I doubt you'd need a spell from the _Book of Mudora_ just to tie your own hair back. Come on, we'll do some more research, together this time. You might have missed something all alone."

"I guess so." He pulled the curtains open on the high, ground-level window that fed light into his underground study. "Well, if you're going to help me, you might want to get comfortable."

"Righto. Just tell me what I'm looking for!"

* * *

" _Yes…as nonsensical and innocent as it seems, that's how it began…"_


	2. To Speak the Name

"Good grief, Okuin. You've been down here for hours."

Okuin's head shot out of the book he'd been immersing himself in and his finger automatically shot to his lips. He glanced to the side to make sure Nokune was still seated at the table, where she'd fallen asleep reading, then finally looked to the steps to see whom the voice belonged to. "Hello, Iziz," he whispered in greeting, standing to meet her.

Iziz was an ancient woman, the current Sage of Shadow and leader of the Sheikah. Years had turned her hair ashen and diminished her stature. The heavy, wrinkled flesh of her face hung down in jowls, which caused more impudent trainees under her to nickname her "the bulldog". Still, though she was no longer strong, she was quick and wise, and the King of Hyrule kept her in close counsel.

She had a certain fondness for Okuin, but that made her strict with him. He was training to be her replacement, after all, and she was determined he would be worthy. She stood on the landing, her lips pursed, waiting for him to continue.

"I've been doing research," Okuin obliged. He could tell from the purple shadows of grass showing through the room's sole window that it was evening. He'd forgotten to eat. Probably missed dinner. But that wasn't important at the moment. He swung the charm that was still clasped firmly in his hair into Iziz's view. "I made this."

He had to bend down so she could study it properly. She twisted it between two fingers and her face folded into a scowl. "What kind of spells have you been using?" she asked.

He shrugged. "A Gerudo sent me the scroll."

"Gerudo?" The old sage abruptly jerked on his hair in surprise, and Okuin nearly lost his balance before he straightened. Iziz's tone grew sharp. "You shouldn't trust it. The Gerudo are thieves. They use black magic."

"Oh, pff. It's not black magic."

The light in the room dimmed momentarily as the candles flickered. Okuin opened his mouth to defend the spell once more when he caught a bad breath of air and broke into a violent fit of coughing.

Iziz's eyes widened in genuine concern, but he held up one hand, his go-to gesture to wave away sympathies. The side of her lip twisted slightly. "Good grief. Get some fresh air, boy, you'll hack your lungs out."

"Y-yes, ma'am," Okuin answered lamely once he'd gotten his breath back.

She turned and slipped back up the stairs, leaving no sound or trace that she'd ever been there—which was typical for one of their kind. Okuin often joked that one reason he was a sage rather than a stealth fighter was his noticeable gait—still quiet by Hylian standards, but blasphemously loud among Sheikah.

Recalling the wise old sage's words, Okuin glanced once more at the scroll in his hand, bemused. Certainly, he'd return it to the Gerudo. And he would do so in person.

* * *

Okuin expected much of the Gerudo Desert, but he didn't expect scaffoldings.

The horse he'd borrowed from Nokune tread gingerly over the shaky wooden bridge, ears flicking at every creak. The buildings before him were beginning to crack at the edges, worn down by time and desert winds. A coliseum rose behind them, stories high and unfinished, surrounded by platforms. He couldn't imagine anyone working in this heat. He pulled his hood tighter around his face to keep the scorching sunlight off of his skin, but it soaked through his dark Sheikah clothing.

It seemed the desert had been abandoned. Maybe everyone sought refuge from this sun. He'd never come here in person before. Perhaps they made their dealings at night. He pulled around the first building, the horse picking its hooves carefully around a sharpened fence. Okuin dismounted in the shade, looking around at the windows, but there was still no sign of life.

Hot wind pushed sand and dust into his face, and he covered his mouth quickly, coughing.

"You there!"

Okuin jerked his head up in alarm. The voice came from the closest roof, its owner a silhouette pointing down at him. Two Gerudo women dashed from the door behind him, spears bristling. Okuin threw his hands in the air, and the speaker above pushed off the roof to land in a cloud of sand before him.

"What are you doing here? This is Gerudo territory! You're lucky Gendooru didn't find you or she'd have locked you up without asking any questions." The woman circled him. Cloth masks covered the Gerudos' faces, and hers was a soft yellow, her dusty eyes glinting beneath it. She was the only one unarmed, but she sized him up in a second, giving the spear-women a subtle signal to give them more room.

Okuin's lungs pressed in on him as he stammered, glancing nervously at the weapons. "I'm sorry, I was wondering if—that is, I received—er, is this yours?" He produced the scroll carefully, taking a deep breath in wake of his ramblings.

She snatched it from him, pulling it open easily. Her eyes darted across only one or two lines before she waved. "He's all right, girls! I invited him. Take care of his horse."

"You invited me?" Okuin's eyes were distracted for a confused minute as a Gerudo gave him a wave and took the reins of Nokune's horse.

"Sure did." The woman in yellow gave him a shove that may have been intended as a friendly pat, or may have been calculated to herd him in a specific direction, considering she was waggling the scroll as a pointer. "I'm the librarian here! Follow me. The name's Gennish. I heard the Hylian library was lacking in stock and I figured if you realized we had scrolls here, too, you'd want to see them. Are you a librarian, too?"

He allowed her to walk him into a large building deeper into the enclave, past crates and more scaffolding and signs of renovation. "I'm a sage, actually," he answered as they went. "I study magic. My name's Okuin."

"Even better! Most of these scrolls contain some form of incantation or other. They haven't been used since our king vanished." She wrenched a door open. In the moment before Okuin's eyes adjusted, the room was a cave, endlessly tunneling into an uncertain blackness. Then the shapes of the walls came into focus and the long room and heavy curtains lining it became visible. There was a scratch of flint as the torch beside them was lit.

"Sorry there's not much light in here. This place used to be a prison cell." Gennish pulled a curtain aside to reveal thick, crisscrossed bars pulled aside behind them. Books and scrolls sat piled on a table inside and around the cage like an abandoned feast of knowledge.

Okuin gave her a short laugh. "It's all right, I'm used to that. Do you have anything on the Sacred Realm?"

Gennish brightened. "Yes! Our king was very interested in the Hylian goddesses." She pulled her facial scarf down and the hood fell to her shoulders. She had a round face, pointed nose, and gold-yellow eyes that missed nothing, flicking continuously around the room in her excitement. Her rust-colored hair was pulled to the top of her head in a ropy ponytail, and she tapped her cheekbones, both of which were decorated with a tattoo of three colored circles: blue, red, and green. Nayru, Din, and Farore. "So am I," she said, with a secretive smile. She pushed half of the mess off the table in the cell, beckoning him over with one arm. "What would you like to see?"

"The scroll you gave me was very old, and some of the wording was stained or smudged. But the spell mentioned something about a path to the Sacred Realm, have you heard of that?"

She dropped a scroll open with little flourish, holding the crude illustrations at arms' length for him to observe. "Some call the entrance the Door of Time. They say, in ancient days, our king actually traveled beyond it. He came back with knowledge of some horrible, ancient secret. Whatever it was, it turned Hyrule's princess against him."

Okuin's lips parted in an _O_ of sudden understanding. "You mean Ganondorf."

Gennish sighed. "We're not permitted to speak the name here. Gendooru says he dishonored our clan."

"He's mostly known as the King of Thieves in Hyrule," Okuin agreed ruefully.

She regained her secretive look. "Indeed, he is. But do they ever tell you what he stole?"

The sage paused in surprise. "…No."

"Knowledge." She tapped one temple. "Still…he left an impact. They said he was so powerful, even the gods themselves couldn't kill him. But even if that were true, he just vanished after that." She passed the article to him.

The scroll had a musty, unpleasant smell, but Okuin was used to such conditions. He squinted at the hasty writing, stained and torn.

 _Though they have refused to let me in, I cannot forget I have been chosen. To obtain the…_

 _…_ _eld Shadows together. This must be how I was meant to find the way into the Sacred Realm. The Spiritual Stones are no longer an option, and I cannot find the Ocarina, so I will use this newfound power to open the Door. The time has come._

"Was this a journal?" he quizzed the librarian. "It's arranged in—what looks like—dates."

"It would seem so. But judging from the state of this, it's like someone went through it by hand just to smudge or tear the names off." She leaned over his shoulder, reading all that remained. "'…Nearly discovered my research. I was forced to destroy the…' Yeah, yeah, smudge, stain, tear, and then: 'Not all is lost, however.' There's so much missing. Then it just says 'They might be the only way to the Sacred Realm now.' With no clue of who or what _they_ might have been."

Okuin bit his lip. "Is it possible _he_ wrote this?"

"The king?"

"Ganondorf." He pointed to a sketch reminiscent of the summer heat he'd seen rising off the sands. "This is the symbol of a goddess. Didn't you say he held the powers of a god?"

Gennish's hand flew to the red circle on her cheek. "He documented his progress. But if he really did find a way into the Sacred Realm…" She straightened, her eyes wide. "Maybe that's where he went! Maybe he's still there!"

She was interrupted as the dust abruptly imposed itself on the sage once again. Gennish looked on in alarm as he hacked his airways clear, waving urgently to be led out into the clear. She obliged, pushing him through the curtains.

"You spend your days among old books and you can't take a little dust?" she said jocularly.

He cleared his throat. "It's the sand, I imagine. Not good for my—" the words sent him off on another round of merciless coughing.

The light outside granted him a new understand of the scroll's contents. The young sage's mind was reeling. The blurred, charcoal sketches on the page were crude, but he knew them. He knew the shape that the artist had so helpfully identified as the Door of Time. In hindsight, he should have known from the name. He passed the building it dwelt in every day on his way to the library. He whispered hoarsely.

"Could the gate to another world really exist in the center of Hyrule?"


	3. Wisdom's Children

Over the course of the few days Okuin spent there, it was decided that pooling their knowledge would clear things up. He didn't even have to ask Gennish to come to Hyrule with him, the only approval they had to wait on belonged to Gendooru, her superior. As soon as she got it she was throwing scrolls together for the journey.

The Gerudo's proud, white steeds stood a few hands taller than Okuin's piebald, with thick shoulders and out-thrust chests. Gennish led hers out of the stable, still chatting animatedly with the Shiekah. "I've always wanted to come to Hyrule. I'd already put in a request to visit but Gendooru wanted some sort of responses first, something to show I was welcome, and here you are!"

Okuin smiled at her. This mystery was becoming more and more worth the effort it was taking to uncover.

The horse snorted at him, and he flinched back. "Whoa. Doesn't take to strangers, does he?"

" _She_ does have trouble making friends," Gennish chuckled, pulling herself up. "Not like your dopey little thing. Trusts anyone who feeds it, does she?"

"She was bred for a different purpose. Speed, for instance," Okuin pointed out, unoffended.

That spurred a race. Once the two of them were fixed in their saddles, and Okuin had made sure the Gerudo's map was properly updated, they took off at a gallop. As Okuin suspected, the white horse soon fell behind, but as he breasted the green lands, his piebald began to falter, and he dismounted to lead her to the Zora River.

She dipped her head in gratefully. Trees had grown up along the banks, providing shelter from the sun and making the horse look more dappled than ever. Okuin washed his face after he'd refreshed his canteen, grateful to be heading home. The weather away from the desert agreed with his lungs much more.

There was a rustle behind him. Okuin kept still for a moment, hoping not to startle the creature, if it was indeed a creature, but the unmistakable brush of fabric against leaves jarred him to turn.

An eyeless mask stared at him. A tall stranger stood, wrapped tightly in a blue and gold cloak like a great perching bird, age and gender made unidentifiable beyond it. Okuin made no move. They did not appear to be armed, at least.

"The Sacred Realm is not the business of Nayru's children. We must keep away from it, or terrible things could be unleashed across Hyrule."

Okuin blinked, unsure for a second if the figure had truly spoken. They turned away from him. "H-hey, what…"

The cloak fell open, but nothing was visible beyond it as an arm shot toward him, pointing. "You must not continue meddling in the goddess's affairs. Others have tried and they all failed, but you? You would doom us." The mask fixed on him. The voice seemed barely affected by it, as though the speaker's face wasn't obscured at all.

Okuin was speechless. His eyes shot to his horse's saddlebags. When had the stranger rummaged through them? How else would they have known? He pulled a knife from its mounted sheath, but when he thrust the blade at the cloaked figure, there was no one there.

A bird broke into song, startling him, and he almost dropped the knife. The piebald grunted, lifting her head. He returned the weapon to its place and pulled himself back into the saddle, urging his mount along.

* * *

Gennish was alone when she reached the castle, but not for very long. A girl, some Sheikah sentry with spiked hair, had been keeping an eye out for riders. She escorted the Gerudo across the drawbridge.

"You've met my uncle, then," the sentry deduced first thing, simply from the heap of documents poking out of the saddlebags.

"Okuin? Yes. We were racing, so I expect he'll be along soon," Gennish told her. They exchanged introductions.

Nokune's fingers had already curled around the white horse's hanging reins. "I'm legally required to sign you in, so you'll have to come with me, all right? I'm employed as a guard so no one else will bother us. I'll take you to the library after, that's where Okuin will be waiting."

This seemed to be the proper protocol, so the Gerudo allowed herself to be led along, dismounting in the cobbled street. Nokune's age was hard to make out, but she seemed to be around sixteen, short and sociable, perhaps a bit too carefree to be a proper soldier. She had bronze skin, lighter than Gennish's but darker than any Hylian, and her hair was a shock of white that ended in a tiny ponytail at the base of her neck.

"I sort of see the resemblance," Gennish noted aloud as she retrieved her saddlebags.

"Hm? Yeah." Nokune ran a hand over her pointed ears. "My dad always said we had the same nose. We used to play together when we were little."

"Isn't he much older than you?"

Nokune grinned sheepishly. "Maybe he was more babysitting than what I remember. But he was good at playing along. We used to swordfight with sticks."

Gennish smiled. "To train you up?"

"I did that on my own." Nokune pushed open a door. The room was built into Hyrule castle's wall and a staircase led up to the battlements, but armored Hylian guards barred their way. The gatekeeper leaned back on a chair, his feet up on his desk. Sleeves of paper spilled over one side with the sudden draft from the outside, dislodging the man with a start as he caught them. Nokune walked over to him while Gennish waited in the hollow of the closed door.

Another man stood by the Hylian guards. He was not armored like them, though he carried a sheathed sword with him, but instead wore a leather vest over a green tunic. Gennish did not see him until he tipped his head in acknowledgment of her. He blended into the worn stone, his blond hair partially covered by a matching green cap.

"It's good to see a Gerudo in the city again," he said by way of greeting.

Nokune gestured her over to the desk, indicating him as she passed. "Ah, this is Link, one of our specially trained knights. Link, this is Gennish, a new friend of my uncle's. I think she'll be spending quite some time here, judging by what she brought."

"Afraid so." Gennish grinned.

"Pleasure to meet you," Link said. "Nokune, keep her out of trouble."

"If she's anything like Okuin, trouble will be hard to come by," Nokune said drily.

"I mean…" Link bit the inside of his lip, trying to find the word. "Don't let anyone make trouble for her."

Gennish's smile faded.

"…Ah." Nokune's head dropped and her shoulders stiffened. Then she pulled Gennish forward to sign her in.

The sun was setting in crimson violet when they emerged. Gennish felt like a secret, still clutching her heavy saddlebags close as Nokune pulled her along the cobbled streets. Helmets rotated to follow them as they passed, but no guards moved to stop the Sheikah or her companion.

"I suppose it's our fault," Gennish said quietly to Nokune as she was pulled inside the library. "Aside from Gendooru, we've effectively cut ourselves off from Hyrule. The last time a Gerudo came here…"

Nokune nodded. She seemed relieved once they were safely inside the building, cramped as it was.

A small crowd awaited them.

Gennish instinctively felt for her concealed knife as she was advanced upon, but a hand was extended in greeting instead of a weapon.

"Welcome to Hyrule."

Okuin pushed through from behind four people to smile at her. "You made it! And you met my niece. Fantastic. Everyone, meet Gennish, the Gerudo librarian."

That was enough for one of them, a Hylian woman with a pinched face. "She doesn't look like much of a librarian to me." She was lighting glass-protected lamps with a high torch, and she didn't let the introduction interrupt her work.

"No, Aska, but she is certainly more distributive of her knowledge than you are, and that's what libraries are supposed to be, last time I checked."

Aska sniffed at Okuin's remark and walked away. The sage hurried to fill in her emptied space between the shelves, throwing his arms around two Sheikah men. "This is Toa and Teru. They're interested in what we're doing so I thought I might show them a little of what we've found, if that's all right. The more the merrier."

The brothers, for they clearly were brothers, gave toothy smiles.

The last remaining stranger, an old woman, harrumphed for attention.

Okuin glanced at her. "This is Iziz. She will not be merry. Or joining us."

"I'm just here to make sure my apprentice is not getting himself into any trouble," the woman said, giving Gennish a brief once-over before excusing herself to follow in Aska's wake.

"I knew she'd love you if she met you," Okuin said with the same dry humor his niece had exhibited.

"What's all that about? Iziz is usually so friendly," Nokune said, frowning.

"I don't know. I think it all makes her nervous. She reacted badly when I showed her the little trinket you and I made." He fished in a haversack he hadn't had with him in the desert, and Gennish moved eagerly forward to see what she'd been waiting for.

"Trinket?" The other Sheikahs parroted.

It was a little gray cuff, almost like a shackle. Carved into it were not letters, but not quite identifiable shapes. Scales of a snake, curling in a tight wheel. Half of what may have been an eye. It didn't feel as thought someone had designed this pattern. The shapes had called to each other to create this object.

Tel and Toa leaned over her as Okuin dropped it in her waiting hands. It was surprisingly light for feeling like it was made of stone.

"It's hard to see," Toa said.

"Here." Okuin snapped his finger, and on the tip of it, a purple flame ignited. The light danced across the cuff. "Better?"

"How did you make this?" Tel inquired.

"I translated a spell using a cypher from the Book of Mudora, and when I read it out, this was in my hair." Okuin held up his hair, which was back to its loose ponytail.

"So it's old magic," Toa devised. He opened one hand hopefully and Gennish relinquished the cuff to him. He gave her an excited smile.

"It's something the sages abandoned, or never learned in the first place. This spell may have been written by…" Okuin paused, and gestured for them to follow him into his study. The basement did not echo like the closed, empty library did. "It may have been originally written by the king of the Gerudo."

All eyes shot to Okuin. Nokune started, her hand clenching as though for want of a weapon. "Ganondorf?!"

"May have. We don't know for sure."

Gennish clarified. "The scrolls are from before the Hero's time, about when Ganondorf was trying to obtain access to the Sacred Realm. It's unclear whether this is supposed to summon a door or a key to open the door, or even whether or not it was ever finished."

"I know you're just trying to make it sound exciting to get us to help dig through dusty parchment for hours and possibly days," Tel said disapprovingly, "but it's working and I'm definitely in." He ended the sentence with another toothy grin.

"The Sacred Realm," Toa breathed. "What would it mean to open a window to the gods? To have them speak directly to the king? We could have a whole new kind of sage serving Hyrule."

"That was my thought!" Okuin said excitedly. "Well, among others. Imagine the possibilities!"

Nokune spoke up. "I don't like it, uncle. If the _king of evil_ wrote these spells, I don't want anything to do with them."

Okuin blinked, his excitement fading. The light on his finger flickered. "All right, then," he said. "Suit yourself."

"I bet I have friends who would be interested in this," Toa suggested. "If we need more manpower to go through the library, I could ask them."

"Plenty of Gerudo would follow me to Hyrule if I asked," Gennish added.

Okuin folded his hands, the violet light shifting over his knuckles. "We have to be careful with whom we share this. The concept of a world beyond our own scares some people."

"Not to mention…" Toa tugged the collar of his tunic.

"Ganondorf," Okuin agreed. "He disappeared years ago while working on this spell. We'll have to take precautions. It may well be that he succeeded. That Ganondorf is in the Sacred Realm."


End file.
